I’m doing exactly the same thing. Started just over two months ago, using the RSV-CE 2nd Ed.
On EWTN, Fr. John Corapi had that six-part program on Divine Revelation, which was based on Vatican II, Dei Verbum (dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation, available from document library at
EWTN.com website).
At some point he said, just read the Bible, he didn’t care how you did it. That was good enough for me.
I’m reading it, underlining things with a pencil, and trying not to get bogged down with worrying about issues.
I want to read the Bible first, before I get to any of the commentaries. I have about five or six commentaries on hand. I’d be nowhere if I was reading each of those at the same time.
After nine weeks, I’m reading the book of Wisdom (of Solomon). I guess I’m way ahead of a pace of reading the bible in a year.
My advice. read slowly and deliberately, but keep up a pace, depending on the difficulty of the reading. I’ve later discovered that I read something and it later occurred to me that I must not have been reading consciously, because I missed an entire idea.
for example, in exodus 2 (I think) I missed the point that God wanted to kill Moses. I never heard of that before, and it didn’t even register when I was reading it. Something I heard made me re-read those verses, and sure enough, it was there!
A lot of things impress me with the reading so far. For sure, life is short. Many lifetimes are covered, and the Bible is often telling you right off whether somebody is a good guy or a bad guy. How would you summarize your life?
There’s a very good reason to start at Genesis and read right through to Nehemiah. At least superficially, it’s one continuous story or pretty much so.
It’s very sad. The Israelites go bad so quickly and so often. That makes the reading very personal to me, very real to life.
On those blank pages at the end of the Bible, I’m writing short quotes from verses I want to remember.
I’m reading as if God were speaking just to me. Ignore the previous post that said not to take it literally. Literally or not, let your mind take it seriously. It sounds like God was very serious back then. I’m quite sure of it, in fact.
There are supposedly seven people who commit suicide in the Bible. There’s Judas plus four people I’ve found in the OT so far. This is some Bible trivia.
Leviticus and Numbers seemed very Catholic to me (separate thread on this). Hint: Lev involves “confession” in a way. Lev 5:5 talks about confessing sins to the priest. Pay attention to the conditions.
Best advice: don’t give up.
